Some days I think I've hit the sweet spot. I love my job, and I'm finally starting to get pretty good at it. Quinn's at an awesome age where he still thinks I'm cool and wants to hang out with me. Somehow projects get done, people get fed, and life happens. We laugh and make plans for the future. Life seems so manageable, even good.
Other days, something happens, often something so insignificant it's hardly worth retelling, and I become immediately aware of how vulnerable we are, just the two of us. Those days I'm reminded why widows and orphans are so dear to the Lord, why he takes care of them. I've had an unusual number of those days recently.
Quinn and I were walking in a parking lot today. I shooed him out of the way of an oncoming car, and his first response was, "Well, if it had hit us, at least it would have hit me first, so I wouldn't be an orphan." Wow. Sometimes I forget how constant his sense of loss is. He's been trying to get me to join the "watch dog" program at his school, but it's a program for dads and he doesn't seem to understand why I can't take him.
A couple days ago I passed by a mom in a wheelchair on the side of the road and her son, about Quinn's age. He was holding a sign that said she had recently been diagnosed with something. I couldn't read what, but by the time I pulled over to help them, someone else had already stopped. Talk about hitting a little too close to home. Considering I had already started bawling, it was probably a good thing someone else was helping them. I drove on home and cried for another hour, barely managing to pull myself together before Quinn got home.
Maybe it's because we're approaching three years, maybe it's because Quinn is older and so much more aware of his dad's absence, but this has been a really difficult season. I joke that one of my only parenting goals is to not become a Flannery O'Connor short story. She has lots of particularly disturbing stories about dysfunctional single moms and their sons. I've taken her off my reading list until Quinn grows up to be a normal functioning adult.
Still, I wonder why this season has been particularly marked by a profound awareness of loss, both for Quinn and me. The only thing I've come up with so far is longing. Rightly experienced grief cultivates a longing for truth, justice, hope, beauty - for life as we were created to live it, in perfect communion with God and each other. And that kind of longing is working changes in my affections that fifteen years of self-discipline and self-effort haven't been able to touch. For that at least, I am thankful.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
almost
I now know why teachers get a summer vacation: post traumatic stress disorder.
The flashbacks are giving me panic attacks, my shoulders have taken up permanent residence just below my earlobes, and on more than one occasion I found my whole class staring at me strangely because I'd been talking to myself in foreign accents while grading papers during a quiz. It's a bad sign when you hear some address you as Mrs. Stallings and you immediately tighten your grip on the stapler, thinking, "If one more person hands me make up work, I just might throw this stapler at them." But then someone hands you a tea cup they made for you in pottery class for you and suddenly you can make it through one more review session where everyone pretends you never taught them anything. When you get hired as a teacher, you should get a hard hat, combat boots, and a good therapist as a sign on bonus.
Earlier this year as I sat down with the headmaster in our annual meeting, I recalled a parent meeting ten years ago when I sat in awe of a veteran teacher who managed to perfectly balance holding a student accountable while maintaining a positive, encouraging professionalism. I thought I'd never be that good, and if I ever got there then my teaching life would be easy. Earlier this year as I sat in a parent conference and heard myself talk I realized I had become that teacher, but that my job, rather than being easier, has become harder.
Turns out the better you get at something, the more difficult it becomes. My pastor said something similar about faith in his sermon the other day. Faith, holiness, sanctification - it all gets harder rather than easier. The same could be said of grief.
It's been a dark, dark winter. Aside from being colder than Alaska here at times winter, the intensity of working full time and single parenting nearly drove me over the edge of crazy. But more than the outward intensity, the inward struggle for sanctification has left me tattered, body and soul. I have been warring greatly with what John Owen would call the "habitual disinclination towards obedience and communion with God." The power of sin has manifested itself not so much in great eruptions of sin, but by the persistence of a thousand relentless temptations incessantly gnawing away at my will to obey.
It is a great mystery of grace that I can feel so beaten down by the sinful nature and yet so clearly further along than I was even just a few years ago. One of the greatest tragedies of the sinful nature is how it draws us away from the mystery of grace, transforming mystery into nothing more than a supermarket transaction for our forgiveness. I come and exchange empty words for a candy bar with a golden ticket. But grace truly understood is the mystery of communion that requires a simultaneous emptying of all my self-endeavors to change and a diligent, constant pressing forward into the only one who can remove this fiery poison in my heart.
As I press forward into grace though, the attack of sin redoubles its efforts to distract me, and I find myself overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, but not disheartened. If anything I find myself more inclined to laugh and dance and throw myself on Christ. I am oh so good at failing, and even better at excusing my failures with pathetic complaints about the difficulty of obedience. Because sin must be killed daily. The same sins have to be put to death over and over and over. And nothing is more exhausting than saying no to the familiar comforting, sinful thought patterns that distract me from grief and pain and suffering.
But there is something even more deeply beautiful about running this race, about pressing on with the expectation of grace fulfilled, about waiting for new life in the midst of darkness and death. I just can't quite put it into words yet but I can almost touch it. almost.
The flashbacks are giving me panic attacks, my shoulders have taken up permanent residence just below my earlobes, and on more than one occasion I found my whole class staring at me strangely because I'd been talking to myself in foreign accents while grading papers during a quiz. It's a bad sign when you hear some address you as Mrs. Stallings and you immediately tighten your grip on the stapler, thinking, "If one more person hands me make up work, I just might throw this stapler at them." But then someone hands you a tea cup they made for you in pottery class for you and suddenly you can make it through one more review session where everyone pretends you never taught them anything. When you get hired as a teacher, you should get a hard hat, combat boots, and a good therapist as a sign on bonus.
Earlier this year as I sat down with the headmaster in our annual meeting, I recalled a parent meeting ten years ago when I sat in awe of a veteran teacher who managed to perfectly balance holding a student accountable while maintaining a positive, encouraging professionalism. I thought I'd never be that good, and if I ever got there then my teaching life would be easy. Earlier this year as I sat in a parent conference and heard myself talk I realized I had become that teacher, but that my job, rather than being easier, has become harder.
Turns out the better you get at something, the more difficult it becomes. My pastor said something similar about faith in his sermon the other day. Faith, holiness, sanctification - it all gets harder rather than easier. The same could be said of grief.
It's been a dark, dark winter. Aside from being colder than Alaska here at times winter, the intensity of working full time and single parenting nearly drove me over the edge of crazy. But more than the outward intensity, the inward struggle for sanctification has left me tattered, body and soul. I have been warring greatly with what John Owen would call the "habitual disinclination towards obedience and communion with God." The power of sin has manifested itself not so much in great eruptions of sin, but by the persistence of a thousand relentless temptations incessantly gnawing away at my will to obey.
It is a great mystery of grace that I can feel so beaten down by the sinful nature and yet so clearly further along than I was even just a few years ago. One of the greatest tragedies of the sinful nature is how it draws us away from the mystery of grace, transforming mystery into nothing more than a supermarket transaction for our forgiveness. I come and exchange empty words for a candy bar with a golden ticket. But grace truly understood is the mystery of communion that requires a simultaneous emptying of all my self-endeavors to change and a diligent, constant pressing forward into the only one who can remove this fiery poison in my heart.
As I press forward into grace though, the attack of sin redoubles its efforts to distract me, and I find myself overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, but not disheartened. If anything I find myself more inclined to laugh and dance and throw myself on Christ. I am oh so good at failing, and even better at excusing my failures with pathetic complaints about the difficulty of obedience. Because sin must be killed daily. The same sins have to be put to death over and over and over. And nothing is more exhausting than saying no to the familiar comforting, sinful thought patterns that distract me from grief and pain and suffering.
But there is something even more deeply beautiful about running this race, about pressing on with the expectation of grace fulfilled, about waiting for new life in the midst of darkness and death. I just can't quite put it into words yet but I can almost touch it. almost.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
cup of tea
If we're all taken up in singing, we can prevent the meeting... too many verbal prayers can hide that we really don't want to meet Jesus, we want to speak to him all the time. To meet him is another cup of tea... Jean Vanier
I'm still waiting for that other cup of tea...
And while I wait in quietness and faith, I laugh and cry and travel and sleep and dance and clean and work and live but somehow cannot write.
Psalm 131
I'm still waiting for that other cup of tea...
And while I wait in quietness and faith, I laugh and cry and travel and sleep and dance and clean and work and live but somehow cannot write.
Psalm 131
My heart is not proud, Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord
both now and forevermore.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
shatter
Sometimes this ocean I live in is too big for words. I've sat down to write numerous times, but found myself unable to follow the currents of thoughts because there have been so many moving so quickly. This winter I have dreamt a lot about the ocean, always wild and out of control. In one particular dream, there were tsunami waves so large the current sucked the water miles out to sea before the waves came. As I lay curled up under one of the waves, certain of my death, the water froze over me. When I reached up to touch the wave, it shattered like glass.
In describing her conversion, Rosaria Butterifeld attacks the modern evangelical tendency to minimize the offense of sin. As she describes it, "Sin lurks in our heart and grabs us by the throat to do its bidding." Oy. She must have been reading some John Owen. Lately I've felt sin's stranglehold on my neck, rendering me mute and making every breath an act of faithful endurance. I suspect the Lord has shut my mouth to keep me from saying anything terribly stupid. For that mercy I'm infinitely thankful.
In describing her conversion, Rosaria Butterifeld attacks the modern evangelical tendency to minimize the offense of sin. As she describes it, "Sin lurks in our heart and grabs us by the throat to do its bidding." Oy. She must have been reading some John Owen. Lately I've felt sin's stranglehold on my neck, rendering me mute and making every breath an act of faithful endurance. I suspect the Lord has shut my mouth to keep me from saying anything terribly stupid. For that mercy I'm infinitely thankful.
So I lay here curled up, waiting for the crashing waves to be stilled, for the water to shatter like glass, for breath and words and a voice.
Friday, March 28, 2014
sheer force of will
If sheer force of will could bring spring to Nashville, it would've come weeks ago by the force of my will alone. Earlier this week I rolled out of bed, threw caution to the wind, and dressed how I wanted the weather to be without checking my phone. Bad call, Wendy, bad call. As I ran through a blizzard in a short-sleeved dress and light cardigan to get my allergy shot, I laughed at my folly. Then did the same thing the next morning.
I spent some time in the hills around Chattanooga last weekend with some dear friends, one of whom brought me the book Bread and Wine by Shuana Niequist. You know it's going to be a good book when you're underlining and dog earring the introduction. Seriously. Buy it right now. Niequist does a fantastic job of interspersing recipes, life stories, Jesus, and the importance of community. Check out this thought on authentic community after a friend dropped by her house unexpectedly while both she and the house were in complete disarray:
Because I'm somewhat of a book glutton, I couldn't help starting The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield last night. This is the spiritual memoir of a lesbian English professor and gay rights activist in upstate New York who eventually became a believer and gave up her lesbian lifestyle. I was intrigued by her story, and even though I haven't finished Bread and Wine, I couldn't escape the check in my spirit that somehow the two books are going to work together to teach me something important. So I dove in, stayed up late, underlined half the first chapter and dog eared the rest. This, my friends, is how I live on the edge: stay up late, underling books, and dressing completely unrelated to the weather report. It's been a wild spring break.
Nevertheless, that check in my spirit was justified. Having lived a highly educated life, Butterfield had always experienced Christians as bad thinkers who glossed over real problems with vulgar platitudes that ended conversations rather than deepening them. Can I get an amen on that? Even as a believer I have to agree with her on that point. Butterfield was doing some research on the rise of the religious right in America, which led her to read and reread the Bible on her own. When she wrote an editorial to the local paper critiquing the Promise Keepers for their gender politics, she received an extraordinary amount of mail in response to her critique. The hate-filled responses from the Christian right she immediately tossed in one box and the fan mail from supporters of women's rights in another box. But one particular letter, from a local pastor sat on her desk for over a week:
And somehow Niequist's reminder in Bread and Wine that hospitality was about creating spaces for authentic community rather than showing off suddenly made more sense. Planning a space and time and meal that allows people to meet together in real, meaningful fellowship simultaneously creates a safe place to ask the real questions. It is no surprise that the next step in Butterfield's faith journey happened over the dinner table at Pastor Ken's house and continued to happen there for over two years before she came to know Jesus. Pastor Ken and his wife accepted Butterfield as she was, open to honest conversation without requiring anything from her.
I am struck by the simple, unglamorous courage it takes to ask honest questions, on both sides. The courage to take a discussion to a deeper level without personal attack is extraordinary in our cutler. Often honest questions from either side are not met with the same intellectual integrity and genuine kindness that Butterfield and Pastor Ken showed each other. Snark and irony are much more likely to get a laugh at another person's expense and at the expense of the gospel. The unfortunate side of the internet is that we've become a culture whose intellectual currency has moved from discussion around a table to the posting and forwarding of one-sided op ed pieces. Perhaps it is no coincidence that we've simultaneously become a culture of take-out meals and eating in front of the television.
If sheer force of will could have converted the world to Christ, it would have been done by now. The combination of these two books has given me a profound sense that one of our obligations as believers is to cultivate the kind of hospitality that allows for authentic conversation, difficult questions, and answers that will push us over into the comprehensive chaos of walking in faith.
I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on these books in the coming weeks, but for now I need to do a lot of meditation, repentance, and self-reflection. One last thought from Philemon, though. We've been reading through Philemon with our students at school, and these verses struck me:
I spent some time in the hills around Chattanooga last weekend with some dear friends, one of whom brought me the book Bread and Wine by Shuana Niequist. You know it's going to be a good book when you're underlining and dog earring the introduction. Seriously. Buy it right now. Niequist does a fantastic job of interspersing recipes, life stories, Jesus, and the importance of community. Check out this thought on authentic community after a friend dropped by her house unexpectedly while both she and the house were in complete disarray:
This is my shame double whammy - my body and my house. It was almost physically painful. But this is the thing: she's my friend. And even though having her sit right in the middle of my house mess sets of every shame alarm I have, I stayed there, perched on my couch, listening and talking...
...I felt within myself a desire to shoo her out, to hide, to keep her from the disorder that is my real, actual life some days. But I took a deep breath, and she sat there listening to me across my dirty coffee table, and we talked about community and family and authenticity. It's easy to talk about it, and really, really hard sometimes to practice it.
This is why the door stays closed for so many of us, literally and figuratively. One friend promises she'll have people over when they finally have money to remodel. Another says she'd be too nervous that people wouldn't eat the food she made, so she never made the invitation.
But it isn't about perfection, and it isn't about performance. You'll miss the richest moments in life - the sacred moments when we feel God's grace and presence through the actual face and hands of the people we love - if you're too scared or too ashamed to open the door anyway, even though someone might see you in your terribly ugly half-zip.For two pretty serious introverts, Emmett and I loved entertaining. You would have thought we lived for dinner parties the way we would plan then, talk thought menu ideas, and made up excuses to host them. I never grew up entertaining, so hospitality was a completely new concept for me when we got married. It wasn't long before I fell in love having people over despite our small hose, slim budget, and awkward social skills. Even when Emmett was sick, we managed to host people frequently, even having visitors to our hotel in Houston. Though hospitality has been more difficult as a working single mom, I've treasured every opportunity to have people in my house. Recently I've been pondering the art of Christian hospitality.
Because I'm somewhat of a book glutton, I couldn't help starting The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield last night. This is the spiritual memoir of a lesbian English professor and gay rights activist in upstate New York who eventually became a believer and gave up her lesbian lifestyle. I was intrigued by her story, and even though I haven't finished Bread and Wine, I couldn't escape the check in my spirit that somehow the two books are going to work together to teach me something important. So I dove in, stayed up late, underlined half the first chapter and dog eared the rest. This, my friends, is how I live on the edge: stay up late, underling books, and dressing completely unrelated to the weather report. It's been a wild spring break.
Nevertheless, that check in my spirit was justified. Having lived a highly educated life, Butterfield had always experienced Christians as bad thinkers who glossed over real problems with vulgar platitudes that ended conversations rather than deepening them. Can I get an amen on that? Even as a believer I have to agree with her on that point. Butterfield was doing some research on the rise of the religious right in America, which led her to read and reread the Bible on her own. When she wrote an editorial to the local paper critiquing the Promise Keepers for their gender politics, she received an extraordinary amount of mail in response to her critique. The hate-filled responses from the Christian right she immediately tossed in one box and the fan mail from supporters of women's rights in another box. But one particular letter, from a local pastor sat on her desk for over a week:
It was a kind and inquiring letter. It encouraged me to explore the kind of questions that I admire: how did you arrive at your interpretations? How do you know you are right? Do you believe in God? He didn't argue with my article; he asked me to explore and defend the presuppositions that undergirded it. I didn't really know how to respond to Ken's letter, but I found myself reading and rereading it. I didn't know which box to file this letter in, and so it sat on my desk and haunted me.
After many days thinking about this, Ken's letter made me confront the presuppositional problem of my research.... It may seem strange to you, but no one had asked me these questions before or led me to ask them of myself. These were reasonable questions, but not the sort of questions that postmodern professors toss around at faculty meetings or the local bar. The Bible makes it clear that reason is not the front door of faith. It takes spiritual eyes to discern spiritual matters. But how do we develop spiritual eyes unless Christians engage the culture with those questions and paradigms of mindfulness out of which spiritual logic flows? That's exactly what Ken's letter did for me - invited me to think in ways I hadn't before.
By the way, I hate a messy desk, one where papers litter the surface. Pastor Ken's letter sat on my desk for a whole week - this is six days longer than I can normally stand. It really bothered me that I didn't know where to file it. I threw it away a few times but always found myself digging through the department's recycling bin to reclaim it at the day's end...Turns out that thoughtful questions, spoke in love to an honest seeker have a deeply profound effect to change a person. I love Butterfield's reminder later in the book that preaching the gospel is not offering an invitation to safety and security and solutions to all your problems. Preaching the gospel is an invitation to completely upend someone's world view, an invitation to "comprehensive chaos," as Butterfield describes it. No one enters into this chaos without the courage born from genuine community.
And somehow Niequist's reminder in Bread and Wine that hospitality was about creating spaces for authentic community rather than showing off suddenly made more sense. Planning a space and time and meal that allows people to meet together in real, meaningful fellowship simultaneously creates a safe place to ask the real questions. It is no surprise that the next step in Butterfield's faith journey happened over the dinner table at Pastor Ken's house and continued to happen there for over two years before she came to know Jesus. Pastor Ken and his wife accepted Butterfield as she was, open to honest conversation without requiring anything from her.
I am struck by the simple, unglamorous courage it takes to ask honest questions, on both sides. The courage to take a discussion to a deeper level without personal attack is extraordinary in our cutler. Often honest questions from either side are not met with the same intellectual integrity and genuine kindness that Butterfield and Pastor Ken showed each other. Snark and irony are much more likely to get a laugh at another person's expense and at the expense of the gospel. The unfortunate side of the internet is that we've become a culture whose intellectual currency has moved from discussion around a table to the posting and forwarding of one-sided op ed pieces. Perhaps it is no coincidence that we've simultaneously become a culture of take-out meals and eating in front of the television.
If sheer force of will could have converted the world to Christ, it would have been done by now. The combination of these two books has given me a profound sense that one of our obligations as believers is to cultivate the kind of hospitality that allows for authentic conversation, difficult questions, and answers that will push us over into the comprehensive chaos of walking in faith.
I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on these books in the coming weeks, but for now I need to do a lot of meditation, repentance, and self-reflection. One last thought from Philemon, though. We've been reading through Philemon with our students at school, and these verses struck me:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love.As ministers of the new covenant we partake of a faith community that births boldness, but that boldness should never overshadow the appeal of love. Paul himself was a great example of loving sinners in their community despite their sin, of a ministry based on patient, long-suffering, discussions, of engaging with difficult questions in bold humility. He never wavered on the definitions of sin, but he always stressed the supremacy of love over the force his will.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
hugging a cactus
I came across this blog a few weeks ago about adult onset runners. I particularly like the phrase "starting to run as an adult can feel like trying to hug a cactus." So true.
The past few weeks have been really good, the kind of really good that makes you nervous about halfway through when you start wondering about the inevitable crash ahead. I'm not speaking of circumstances here, like everything happening was good. More of a state of being, that no matter what was happening, good or bad, I was able to give the circumstance the mental space it deserved. Triumphs didn't earn my salvation, failures were not reflections of my worthlessness, and sin led me to Godly sorrow instead of worldly sorrow. Faith was easy. I was in the zone.
It's not that I was expecting something disastrous, I just know from experience that faith is hardly ever easy for me. Even just a couple weeks of rest from the daily battle with my sinful nature leaves me weak and flabby. I started to get nervous a couple weeks ago when I read this from John Newton's Letters:
I have never been a runner and never really wanted to be a runner. A combination of boredom with my workouts and only having access to a treadmill at home meant I was suddenly running distances I never thought possible for me. Sure other people can do that, but not me. And while full on running for me is a light jog for most of the runners I know, I actually enjoy the pain and mental workout that comes with running.
I am pretty certain that it is impossible to maintain my affinity for baking and ever call myself an avid runner, but I've started reading a few articles about how to race. Although it should have been obvious, many of those articles are on training your mind to push your body. One particularly good article quotes Arnold Schwarzenegger about pushing himself until he passes out because the benefits of pushing himself outweigh the inconvenience of passing out. Although this advice isn't intended to be taken literally for runners, it is meant to illustrate that the benefits of pushing your physical body harder than most people are willing to push it outweigh the momentary discomforts.
Enter 2 Corinthians 5: 4, 6:3-4, and 4: 17.
There are all sorts of people in my life who aren't following Jesus, and I totally understand why. To have our overwhelming desires for intimacy, excitement, newness, comfort, image, etc. met right now in this instant is an unbearable temptation. I get it. I fail all the time. And then I try to pretend it wasn't that big of a deal or maybe God should change his standards or maybe I'll just give up for a while. Or best of all, maybe if I pretend he's not real, then I can do whatever I want, guilt-free. Only none of those options ever work. They weaken my will, allowing me to give in to temptation, but truth always comes back.
And the truth is, I haven't pushed myself to passing out. I do groan in this mortal body, longing to be swallowed up by life, but I have not pushed myself to great endurance. So weeks like last week where everything comes crashing down emotionally, and my sinful nature bears down on me from nowhere like an avalanche, and things that were easy last week feel impossible this week - it feels like mile ten of my twelve mile run, like I'm going to die.
What would a trainer say if this were a race? Push harder and run your best split because the only thing stopping you is your mind. And who cares if you pass out trying (even though you probably won't)? Passing out is not going to kill you.
Maybe, just maybe, that is what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians. I sure hope it's not, But I think it is.
The past few weeks have been really good, the kind of really good that makes you nervous about halfway through when you start wondering about the inevitable crash ahead. I'm not speaking of circumstances here, like everything happening was good. More of a state of being, that no matter what was happening, good or bad, I was able to give the circumstance the mental space it deserved. Triumphs didn't earn my salvation, failures were not reflections of my worthlessness, and sin led me to Godly sorrow instead of worldly sorrow. Faith was easy. I was in the zone.
It's not that I was expecting something disastrous, I just know from experience that faith is hardly ever easy for me. Even just a couple weeks of rest from the daily battle with my sinful nature leaves me weak and flabby. I started to get nervous a couple weeks ago when I read this from John Newton's Letters:
Strength of grace is not ordinarily acquired by those who sit still and live at ease, but by those who frequently meet with something that requires a full exertion of what power the Lord has given them.Um... Lord... Maybe this is why people aren't all that excited about following you? Just a thought.
I have never been a runner and never really wanted to be a runner. A combination of boredom with my workouts and only having access to a treadmill at home meant I was suddenly running distances I never thought possible for me. Sure other people can do that, but not me. And while full on running for me is a light jog for most of the runners I know, I actually enjoy the pain and mental workout that comes with running.
I am pretty certain that it is impossible to maintain my affinity for baking and ever call myself an avid runner, but I've started reading a few articles about how to race. Although it should have been obvious, many of those articles are on training your mind to push your body. One particularly good article quotes Arnold Schwarzenegger about pushing himself until he passes out because the benefits of pushing himself outweigh the inconvenience of passing out. Although this advice isn't intended to be taken literally for runners, it is meant to illustrate that the benefits of pushing your physical body harder than most people are willing to push it outweigh the momentary discomforts.
Enter 2 Corinthians 5: 4, 6:3-4, and 4: 17.
For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
We put no stumbling block in anyone's path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships, and distresses...
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.I'm starting to think that trying to follow Jesus is like trying to hug a cactus...
There are all sorts of people in my life who aren't following Jesus, and I totally understand why. To have our overwhelming desires for intimacy, excitement, newness, comfort, image, etc. met right now in this instant is an unbearable temptation. I get it. I fail all the time. And then I try to pretend it wasn't that big of a deal or maybe God should change his standards or maybe I'll just give up for a while. Or best of all, maybe if I pretend he's not real, then I can do whatever I want, guilt-free. Only none of those options ever work. They weaken my will, allowing me to give in to temptation, but truth always comes back.
And the truth is, I haven't pushed myself to passing out. I do groan in this mortal body, longing to be swallowed up by life, but I have not pushed myself to great endurance. So weeks like last week where everything comes crashing down emotionally, and my sinful nature bears down on me from nowhere like an avalanche, and things that were easy last week feel impossible this week - it feels like mile ten of my twelve mile run, like I'm going to die.
What would a trainer say if this were a race? Push harder and run your best split because the only thing stopping you is your mind. And who cares if you pass out trying (even though you probably won't)? Passing out is not going to kill you.
Maybe, just maybe, that is what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians. I sure hope it's not, But I think it is.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
deluged
I made a cup of tea tonight for the sole purpose of warming my hands while I stood in the driveway to watch the approaching storm. A violent spring storm storm brings its own sort of chill that travels straight down to the bones no matter how warm the day or thick the clothes. I spun circles in the driveway as part of a furious game of hide and seek with the lighting that was always somehow behind me. Big fat drops forced me back to the safety of the porch and eventually inside the door where I watched sheets of rain billow across the yard like the curtains at my window.
Watching storms always reminds me of a summer afternoon in Charleston over a decade ago where for hours I watched black clouds from hundreds of miles away race to overtake the daylight. Hulking black masses fell over themselves like a thousand hungry demons in a race to deluge the land with their wild torrents of water. It made me feel very small. I'm still awed by the relentless fury of an oncoming storm. The foreshadowing, the rising action, the tense quiet are the best parts of the story.
The safety of my doorway gave me perspective on the sheets of water twisting across the yard. Someone got caught in those torrents tonight, getting out of their car or heading home from work. I imagined the futile wrestling with umbrellas rendered useless by the sideways motion of the water, the icy feeling of rain piercing clothing, the gross lack of perspective caused as life collapses to a single desire to get out of the rain. I imagined this storm inside of a tee pee or log cabin, with leaks in the roof and without the weather channel app and 911. I said a prayer of thanks and felt very small.
I started Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky a few days ago. Although I enjoy a book that makes me laugh or cry, it is extremely rare for me to find a book that triggers anxiety. Something about the way Dostoevsky gets into the minds of his characters and communicates the darkness of sin, the hopelessness induced by injustice and poverty, and the absurd lies our egos devour on a daily basis makes me feel like I cannot breathe. It will likely take me a year to read this book because ten pages brings me dangerously close to hyperventilating. After twenty pages of reading tonight I was so out of sorts that I snapped at Quinn. I had to leave the room, do some breathing exercises, and speak some truth to myself before I was calm enough to apologize.
In the preface Richard Pevear describes a change in Dostoevsky's writing after his return from exile. Dostoevsky's later works, including Crime and Punishment, are considerably darker. The flimsy reality of the concrete world plays a secondary role to the darker realities of consciousness. I feel like a voyeur peering into someone else's soul and finding my own struggles being played out as a farce on a stage. It is both mesmerizing and unhinging. To what would crushing poverty or a hopeless economic system reduce me? How would gross injustice or extreme hunger warp my understanding of the truth?
I've been sitting in a class on Sunday mornings where overfed upper middle class white people talk about theology. I love the people and I love the discussion, but every once in a while I want to climb the walls and claw my eyes out because we sit there like Job, throwing out God's precepts with so little experience of his person, as if there weren't a thousand hungry demons bearing down on us ready to unleash all kinds of evil.
I'm also reading The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day. After being sort-of wrongfully imprisoned, she writes of lying a cell listening to a woman in the next cell:
Because of Day's book and Wilson's Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl (which I can't stop coming back to for some reason), I've been exploring the concept of smallness in my quiet time. What does it mean for Christ, the Word himself, to take on flesh and wash the feet of the men who would abandon him just hours later? Certainly I am completely out of my league, here, but I suspect I have greatly underestimated the role of courage in this story. To face the approaching storm and stand in its billowing torrents without fleeing is a feat unimaginable to my weak frame. I can't even watch it coming without a teacup to warm my hands and a dry house prepared for my retreat. Even reading about these storms deeply scars my consciousness, so how can I presume to try and face them in real life?
I am deluged by "the depth of the disorder in the world… the unspeakable dreariness of sin from the first petty self-indulgence to this colossal desire which howled through metal walls!" But though I am deluged, I fear drowning far less than I fear the self-inflicted torture of my sinful nature. And perhaps that kind of desperation, selfish though it may be, is the beginning of courage.
Watching storms always reminds me of a summer afternoon in Charleston over a decade ago where for hours I watched black clouds from hundreds of miles away race to overtake the daylight. Hulking black masses fell over themselves like a thousand hungry demons in a race to deluge the land with their wild torrents of water. It made me feel very small. I'm still awed by the relentless fury of an oncoming storm. The foreshadowing, the rising action, the tense quiet are the best parts of the story.
The safety of my doorway gave me perspective on the sheets of water twisting across the yard. Someone got caught in those torrents tonight, getting out of their car or heading home from work. I imagined the futile wrestling with umbrellas rendered useless by the sideways motion of the water, the icy feeling of rain piercing clothing, the gross lack of perspective caused as life collapses to a single desire to get out of the rain. I imagined this storm inside of a tee pee or log cabin, with leaks in the roof and without the weather channel app and 911. I said a prayer of thanks and felt very small.
I started Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky a few days ago. Although I enjoy a book that makes me laugh or cry, it is extremely rare for me to find a book that triggers anxiety. Something about the way Dostoevsky gets into the minds of his characters and communicates the darkness of sin, the hopelessness induced by injustice and poverty, and the absurd lies our egos devour on a daily basis makes me feel like I cannot breathe. It will likely take me a year to read this book because ten pages brings me dangerously close to hyperventilating. After twenty pages of reading tonight I was so out of sorts that I snapped at Quinn. I had to leave the room, do some breathing exercises, and speak some truth to myself before I was calm enough to apologize.
In the preface Richard Pevear describes a change in Dostoevsky's writing after his return from exile. Dostoevsky's later works, including Crime and Punishment, are considerably darker. The flimsy reality of the concrete world plays a secondary role to the darker realities of consciousness. I feel like a voyeur peering into someone else's soul and finding my own struggles being played out as a farce on a stage. It is both mesmerizing and unhinging. To what would crushing poverty or a hopeless economic system reduce me? How would gross injustice or extreme hunger warp my understanding of the truth?
I've been sitting in a class on Sunday mornings where overfed upper middle class white people talk about theology. I love the people and I love the discussion, but every once in a while I want to climb the walls and claw my eyes out because we sit there like Job, throwing out God's precepts with so little experience of his person, as if there weren't a thousand hungry demons bearing down on us ready to unleash all kinds of evil.
I'm also reading The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day. After being sort-of wrongfully imprisoned, she writes of lying a cell listening to a woman in the next cell:
In the next cell to me there was a drug addict who beat her head against the metal walls of her cell and howled like a wild animal. No woman in child birth, no cancer patient, no one in the long year I had spent in King's County hospital had revealed suffering like this. I pressed my hands to my ears, and covered my head with my pillow to try to muffle the sounds. It was most harrowing to think that this pain, this torture, was in a way self-inflicted, with full knowledge of the torture involved. The madness, the perverseness of this seeking for pleasure that was bound to be accompanied by such mortal agony was hard to understand. To see human beings racked, by their own will, made one feel the depth of the disorder of this world… I felt the sadness of sin, the unspeakable dreariness of sin from the first petty self-indulgence to this colossal desire which howled through metal walls! And yet I do not think I thought of these things as I thought of God while in the solitary confinement cell at Occoquan. I just suffered desperately and desired to be free from my suffering, with a most urgent and selfish passion. The instinct for self-preservation made me forget everything but a frantic desire for freedom, to get away from these depths into which I had fallen…. I could get away, but what of others? I could get away, paying no penalty, because of my friends, my background, my education, my privilege. I suffered but was not part of it. I put it from me. It was too much for me. I think that for a long time, one is stunned by such experiences. They seem to be quickly forgotten, but they leave a scar that is never removed.I nearly sobbed at these words, seeing myself in both the addict she describes and in her own instinct for self-preservation. John Owen may have taught me the theology of sin's deceit, but Dostoevsky's storytelling is leaving its scars on my consciousness. Whenever I put down his book, I can only describe my emotional state, like Day does, as a "frantic desire for freedom, to get away from these depths into which I had fallen."
Because of Day's book and Wilson's Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl (which I can't stop coming back to for some reason), I've been exploring the concept of smallness in my quiet time. What does it mean for Christ, the Word himself, to take on flesh and wash the feet of the men who would abandon him just hours later? Certainly I am completely out of my league, here, but I suspect I have greatly underestimated the role of courage in this story. To face the approaching storm and stand in its billowing torrents without fleeing is a feat unimaginable to my weak frame. I can't even watch it coming without a teacup to warm my hands and a dry house prepared for my retreat. Even reading about these storms deeply scars my consciousness, so how can I presume to try and face them in real life?
I am deluged by "the depth of the disorder in the world… the unspeakable dreariness of sin from the first petty self-indulgence to this colossal desire which howled through metal walls!" But though I am deluged, I fear drowning far less than I fear the self-inflicted torture of my sinful nature. And perhaps that kind of desperation, selfish though it may be, is the beginning of courage.
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